I Am Charlotte Simmons

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I Am Charlotte Simmons is a 2004 novel by Tom Wolfe, concerning sexual and status relationships at the fictional Dupont University, closely modeled after Duke University and Stanford University. Wolfe researched the novel by talking to students at Stanford, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Florida, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan.

As of October 2005, Trilogy Entertainment and Syntax Entertainment bought the rights to a movie version; casting and other specifics are still uncertain. This book was found on George Bush's bedside table. [link], [link]

Contents

1 Theme
2 Research
3 Reviews
4 Film Version
5 References
6 External links

Theme

The book develops themes Wolfe introduces in the title essay from his book Hooking Up. The novel centers on Charlotte, a naïve new student at Dupont University, a school boasting a top-ranked basketball program and an Ivy League academic reputation. Despite Dupont's elite status, in the minds of its students, sex, alcohol, and social status rule the day. The student culture is focused upon gaining material wealth, physical pleasure and a well-placed social status; academics are only important insofar as they help achieve these goals.

Research

The book appears to be an amalgamation of several elite universities. Wolfe denies that the book is fully based on Duke, from which his daughter Alexandra graduated in 2002. For instance, "St. Ray's" fraternity in the book is allegedly loosely modeled after the Delta chapter of St. Anthony Hall—a fraternity often referred to as "St. A's"—at the University of Pennsylvania. In researching for "Simmons," Wolfe attended a cocktail party hosted by the fraternity, known for its elitism and secrecy, in 2001. Even the locations of the "St. Ray's" house and the St. A's house are similar, the former located on fictional "Ladding Walk," while the latter resides on Penn's Locust Walk.[link]

The basketball star, Jo-Jo Johanssen, is a jock/celebrity stock character, derived from colleges like Duke, Stanford, Indiana University and the University of Florida, where student athletes are treated as superior.

Reviews

The novel met with a mostly tepid critical response. It won the London-based Literary Review''s Bad Sex in Fiction Award, an "honor" established "to draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel." Wolfe later explained that such sexual references were deliberately clinical.

Film Version

Wolfe's novel has been optioned and will be made into a feature film that will most likely be released sometime in 2007. Production companies Trilogy Entertainment and Syntax Entertainment have bought the rights to the book. John Watson (screenwriter for ) has been signed to write the screenplay. (Note: as of February 11, 2006, this movie is still in early stages of development; personnel may change, and no casting has taken place yet).

References

[Guardian Unlimited Books - Wolfe novel to be filmed]
Wolfe, Tom. I am Charlotte Simmons ISBN 0374281580.

External links

[Slate Book Club review]
[The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: 'Moral Suicide,' à la Wolfe], The New York Times, November 16, 2004
Charles Foran, ["The Bonfire Is Out"], The Walrus, March 2005.
[Love in the Age of Neuroscience] - Mickey Craig and Jon Fennell, The New Atlantis

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